No Worse for the Wear
by daysandweeks
Summary: First love really messes us up.


**So this is brief, and I feel it could be better, but over on my tumblr (5give-5get) I posted that I would write any LBD story if given prompts. I'm still working on the others, mostly focusing on my other story, "Begin Again", but someone asked for something angsty, so I attempted and came up with a Lydia story. It gives her background with the boy she mentioned in her videos… She mumbled a bit but I think she said Brant Cooper? Anyway, here's her story!**

.x.

Lydia has her first kiss on a Tuesday afternoon while sitting on the handlebars of her bike.

Brant Cooper has soft lips and a surprisingly deep voice, and he has no idea that Lydia is not, in fact, going into ninth grade next year.

.x.

"Hey, little eighth grader."

Lydia doesn't see Brant again until her freshman year of high school, his senior. She's headed to her Algebra I class, laughing with her best friend, when she literally bumps into him. He's taller than before, with the same sandy blonde hair and big hands and wide smile.

"It's little ninth grader now," Lydia replies with a wink, and then she trots off with her friend, sparing Brant, or at least his ass, a backwards glance.

.x.

"So you're my boyfriend, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course." He returns his mouth to her collarbone, and _oh God that feels so good_. For a second, Lydia forgets what it was she was worried about.

But only for a second.

"Then why can't we tell anyone at school? Why can't you hold my hand in the hallway like all my friends' boyfriends do?"

And Brant, with his infinite wisdom, leans back into the driver's seat. "Because, Lydia. I'm a senior, you're a freshman. It's sorta scandalous, don't you think?"

And it is, and Lydia likes scandalous. Didn't her second kiss, Evan Michaels, tell her that scandalous was her middle name?

And Lydia, with her infinite wisdom, leans back towards the driver's seat to give Brant access to her collarbone once more. Because what's better than a dirty, scandalous secret?

.x.

"So what's it like, sex?"

It's nice to suddenly be the most knowledgeable in her group of friends. While Karen is always tutoring Lydia in Spanish and Jessica is always helping her with her English I essays and Cara is always giving her somewhat corny love advice, Lydia finally is the one who knows what she's talking about. Hell, Lydia's fairly certain that for once she even knows more about something than her sisters Jane and Lizzie.

"It's…totes amazing."

And Lydia, with her infinite wisdom, went on and on, detail after detail.

.x.

"It's just, you haven't been returning any of my calls."

"I've been busy, kid."

"I'm not that much younger than you, you know. Three years. I'm not a kid."

.x.

"So is he going to take you to prom?" Karen asks one afternoon in between cigarettes. Lydia likes to smoke, but Karen doesn't. Karen just does it to fit in.

Lydia rolls her eyes. She wants to _seem_ like she's still full of wisdom, but deep down inside she has no idea what is going on. "Brant said he can't take me. That'd be such a big deal, you know? Scandalous."

"Don't you like scandalous?"

And she does, and she thinks that Brant does too given the way he kissed her between her legs last night, but maybe what he likes and what he does are two very different things.

.x.

Lydia realizes that Brant is cheating on her – or maybe cheating on someone else with her – on a Tuesday afternoon.

She's gotten into theater lately because she wants to get into something that Lizzie and Jane didn't get into. She's in the props closet, her hair a mess, trying to find something. Years later, she will not remember what she is looking for, only what she sees before her.

Brant is there with Lauren Robertson, the senior that he said he was taking to prom "as a friend". Lauren is the lead in the school play (Lydia only has one line) and she is also a cheerleader.

Her blouse is undone and Brant's lips are right above her polka-dotted pink and green bra.

Lydia drops whatever it is she is carrying and runs.

.x.

Everyone asked Lydia what sex was like. No one asks her what it's like to be two weeks late for your period and not have the only boy you've ever slept with there to answer your phone calls.

"I've been busy," he tells her the first time she confronts him in school.

"Who are you?" he asks her the second.

.x.

It was just the stress that made it late. Oh, thank God.

.x.

Eventually, Brant graduates. And Lydia, with her infinite wisdom, moves on. And to the Karens and Jessicas and Caras of the world, she's no worse for the wear. She dies her hair a bit redder and drinks a touch too much vodka and sometimes puts more eyeliner on her eyes than she should. She kisses boys who are dangerous and steals her mom's meds and gets caught beneath the bleachers with a bowl or giving a blowjob, but Lydia and she's fun and she's in love with life.

Well…she is, isn't she?


End file.
